THE THREE MAGI, ZOROASTRIAN PILGRIMS

During the winter holiday season in the Judeo-Christian
West there is always mention of the three Magi who traveled to
Bethlehem to give gifts to the Christ Child. These Magi are now
depicted as three kings, but earlier versions of them show them as
three Persians. Were the Three Magi Zoroastrians? How much
Zoroastrianism is there in the story of these three pilgrims?

The first thing we must remember is that the story of the
Three Magi is just that - a STORY. It is not history, and is not
meant to relate an actual incident (of course, there is always the
chance that it actually happened, but no one will ever be able to
prove it). This is a sacred story, and every detail in it is meant to
convey a symbolic spiritual meaning. The fact that this is a story and
not history does not mean that everything in it is false. Stories are
told using real data, and thus the tellers of the story of the Magi
could draw on actual details of the cosmopolitan civilization they
knew in the first century A.D.

The story is in the Gospel according to Matthew, 2:1-12,
and goes as follows: "After Jesus had been born at Bethlehem in
Judaea during the reign of King Herod, some wise men came to
Jerusalem from the east. "Where is the infant King of the Jews?"
they asked. "We saw his star as it rose and have come to do him
homage." .".. King Herod interviews the wise men, hoping to have
them lead him to the newborn Jesus, whom he regards as a threat to
his reign. The miraculous Star leads the wise men directly to the
child. "The sight of the star filled them with delight, and going into
the house they saw the child with his mother Mary, and falling to
their knees they did him homage. Then, opening their treasures,
they offered him gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh..."

The Greek word for "wise men" is magoi which is derived
from the Persian word for priest; the Avestan origin is obscure,
perhaps coming from maga translated by Dr. Ali Jafarey as
"magnanimity, generosity, or great fellowship". As is stated in the
"Jerome Biblical Commentary," by the time of Jesus the word
magos in Greek no longer meant only Persian priest, but could
mean astrologer or occultist - or charlatan. Here it is not used in a
negative sense.

The story of the Magi in the New Testament, told by Jews
who had become Christians, is spun from elements in the Old
Testament, which are used to prove that Jesus is the Messiah, King
not only of the Jews but of the whole world. As the "messianic"
passages of the Old Testament were read, they "predicted" that the
non-Jewish nations of the world would come to adore the Jewish
messiah (or nation) and would bring international treasures. Some
of the relevant passages that were alluded to in the Magi story are
Isaiah 60:5-6: "...The riches of the sea will flow to you, the wealth
of nations come to you; camels in throngs will cover you, and
dromedaries of Midian and Ephah; everyone in Sheba will come,
bringing gold and incense and singing the praise of the Lord."
Another passage is in the Psalms, 72:10-11: "The kings of Tarshish
and of the islands will pay him tribute, the kings of Sheba and Seba
will offer gifts; all kings will do him homage..." Other prophetic
texts mention trade in incense and spices, such as Jeremiah 6:20 and
Ezekiel 27:22.

Thus in Christian interpretations the Magi passage is usually
cited as a symbol that the non-Jewish nations will eventually come
to Christ and honor him. There is no identification of the Wise Men
as Persian in the Gospel, and their gifts are not Persian in origin:
frankincense and myrrh come from Arabia or Yemen. The gifts
themselves have symbolism for Christians: frankincense is for
Christ's divinity, gold is for his royalty, and myrrh is a symbol of his
eventual Passion and death, since it was used to anoint corpses. The
number of the Magi is never specified in the Gospel, though it was
assumed they were three, since there are three gifts mentioned. In
the Psalm 72 passage three kings appear, which was one origin of
the "We Three Kings" concept.

Even though there was no specification of Persian origin for
the Magi of the Gospel, in the early centuries of Christian story and
art they were assumed to be Persian. In paintings and mosaics they
were dressed in Persian garb; one example is in the 6th century
Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna. Another example, cited by
German writer Manfred Barthel, is the Church of the Nativity in
Jerusalem, which was spared from destruction by Persian invaders
in A.D. 614 because the church had a fresco of the Three Kings
dressed in Persian dress. A sixth-century Syrian source, cited by
Zoroastrian scholar Dariush Jahanian, names the Three Kings as
"Hormizdah king of Persia, Yazdegerd King of Saba, and Perozadh
King of Sheba," but those names are all Persian, not Sabaean or
Arab.

It was in Europe that the current image of three international
kings was created, to further dramatize the coming of the Nations to
Christ. One King was made into a black African, another an
Oriental or an Arab, and the other a European. Their names were
no longer Persian, but Orientalizing: Caspar, Melchior, and
Balthazar. These are Hellenized versions of Semitic names, and
already appear inscribed in the 6th-century San Vitale mosaics.

Given the telling and retelling of the story in the Christian
Middle East and Europe, is there really anything Zoroastrian about
the Three Magi?

There really were Magi, of course, in Jesus' time, and they
had been Zoroastrian priests for hundreds of years. As the
Zoroastrian faith, and the Persian empire, expanded westward into
the territory of Media, the priests of the old religion, the Magi,
adopted themselves into Zoroastrianism, though not without major
social upheavals. The general scholarly opinion is that these priests
of the old Indo-Iranian faith, which Zarathushtra preached against in
the Gathas, re-adapted many practices of the old religion back into
the faith - such as reverence for subordinate divinities, the haoma-
sacrifice, and purity rituals. "The teachings of Zarathushtra were
intermingled with the old religion, and the Magi's position was
transformed into the priests of the new religion..." writes Dariush
Jahanian. Many of the Magian practices were themselves adapted
from Mesopotamian religion, such as purity laws and especially
astrology. This is how the Magi came to be known in the West as
astrologers. The word for "magic," as is well-known, comes from
"magi." Thus the "magus" was known in the Hellenistic world as an
astrologer and occultist, even if he were not Persian.

The Magi who were featured in the story may not have been
completely Zoroastrian. They may have been practicing a
syncretistic (mixed) tradition that included not only Zoroastrian and
Mesopotamian elements but practices and beliefs from various
pagan traditions. What, then, were they searching for? One idea
held by many scholars is that they were searching for the Saoshyant
or "Savior," who was an ideal king-figure hoped for by both
Persians and Jews. Jahanian, in a short article about the Christmas
Star (FEZANA Journal, Winter '94) tries to disprove this by stating
that this concept is not messianic in the Gathas, but just describes
very good people who are of benefit to society. But by the time of
Jesus' birth, the Gathas were far from being the most influential text
in the Zoroastrian world, and their meaning had long since been re-
interpreted.

Later Persian legends state that the Magi had come from
Ecbatan, a Western Iranian city; others, cited by Marco Polo in his
13th-century account of his travels, place their tombs at Saveh,
southwest of Tehran, which was a center for Islamic Iranian
astrology.

What about the Star that the Magi were following? The
Christian story is intended to recall the "star of Jacob" mentioned in
Numbers 24:17 : "A star from Jacob takes the leadership..." A star
was symbolic of a god, or a deified king, in the ancient Middle East
- stars appear on carved signature seals and wall-carvings. There are
Zoroastrian legends about the Star of the Magi, that identify it as
Tishtrya, or Sirius, the star whose rising heralds the coming of rain.
Sirius first rises in late summer, just before dawn, and in winter
nights around the solstice and Christmas it blazes in the sky in the
early and middle evening. Tishtrya is a yazata or guardian spirit,
now known as "Tir," whose festival, Tirgan, is celebrated in the
summer with much splashing of water. But remember that this is
Story, not History, so that the element of the Star of Bethlehem is
not a real, identifiable star or celestial event. (That hasn't stopped
generations of scholars from trying to find it.)

There are other factors in the Magi story which would be
familiar to Zoroastrians, though it is doubtful that these were
recognized by the Gospel-writers. The three kings, to a Zoroastrian,
symbolize the Threefold Path of "Good Thoughts, Good Words,
and Good Deeds." Many other Zoroastrian symbols also follow this
threefold symbolism, such as the three steps to the ancient
Achaemenian fire-altar or the three windings of the kushti cincture.
Christians, though, interpret the three kings as Trinitarian, one to
adore each Person of the Trinity. The frankincense which the
Jewish/Christian authors interpreted as honor to Christ's divinity is
also part of Zoroastrian worship: known as loban, frankincense is
sprinkled on the embers of the Sacred Fire as a fragrant homage to
the bright symbol of Ahura Mazda.

Zoroastrians are rather proud of their presence in Christian
story, even if their Magi adore a Christian God-incarnation. Unlike
Christians and Jews, Zoroastrians have almost always been tolerant
of other religions (except for the evil-doing daeva-worshippers in the
Gathas, and during the Sassanian Persian Empire). As Dr. Jahanian
says in his article,
"So, it appears, the Zoroastrians were the first to recognize the birth
of Jesus Christ."
This sacred story thus gathers together elements from three great
monotheistic religious traditions.